The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the 2025 Hospice Final Rule (CMS-1810-F) on July 30, 2024. Homecare Homebase has compiled a brief summary of the information found in the final rule, along with links and helpful tools.
CMS 2025 Hospice Final Rule Resources
CMS 2025 Hospice Final Rule – At a Glance
Below is a brief summary with some takeaways from the content of the hospice final rule. The document:
- Estimates the overall economic impact to be $790 million in increased payments to hospices.
- Finalizes a hospice payment update of 2.9%
- Finalizes the collection of HOPE patient-level data on or after October 1, 2025, which will replace the existing Hospice Item Set (HIS).
- Finalizes two new quality process measures based on HOPE data which are expected to begin after FY 2028:
- Timely follow-up for pain impact
- Timely follow-up for non-pain symptom impact
- Finalizes the adoption of new OMB labor market delineations based on data collected from the 2020 Decennial Census.
- Finalizes clarifying regulation text changes including:
- Reorganizing the regulations to clearly identify the distinction between the “election statement” and the “notice of election”
- Clarifying text changes that align payment regulations and Conditions of Participation (CoPs) regarding who may certify terminal illness and determine admission to hospice care
- Finalizes several changes to the CAHPS Hospice Survey, including the addition of a web-mail mode survey option.
- Summarizes comments on the potential implementation of a separate payment mechanism to account for high-intensity palliative care services such as: palliative dialysis, chemotherapy, radiation, and transfusions.
- Summarizes stakeholder input on potential data collection items related to four Social Determinants of Health items relevant to the HQRP:
- Housing instability
- Food insecurity
- Utilities
- Transportation challenges
HCHB is committed to helping our clients successfully navigate the complexities associated with regulatory and industry changes. Every year, the proposed and final rules for Hospice and Home Health are analyzed by The HCHB Product Management team to plan for needed changes to the software. In addition, HCHB Analytics users receive access to the Hospice Revenue Impact Model. This dashboard reflects the potential affects the final rule may have on a user’s organization.
